SHAN-TEA
Installation, performance and experimental dwelling space
Medicine Lake, MN - 2010
Shan-Tea - Medicine Lake, MN. 2010
An out-door installation, experimental dwelling and community space, constructed as part of the 2010 ArtShanty project on Medicine Lake, Minnesota, in collaboration with Kelsey Nelson.
The Shan-tea was made using elements of traditional Mongolian yurt construction, while also bearing likeness to an over-sized tea-pot. Using tea as platforms for hosting, co-exisitng and thriving in a group, during the coldest months of the year, visitors were invited into it's round interior and offered a cup of tea, in exchange for a smile and a story.
The project investigated hosting, as an artistic act, challenging the dichotomies of private/public; host/guest; stranger/friend. The border between artist/spectator and resident/guest was further dissolved by acknowledging the power of the frozen surface of Medicine Lake as a liminal space. The lake is a place between, an everyman’s land and a landscape familiar to every Minnesotan- a common ground. Guillermo Gómoez-Peña talks about such spaces when discussing his utopian New World Order,“...it’s all margins, meaning there are no ‘others,’ or better said, the only true ‘others’ are those who resist fusion, mestizaje, and cross-cultural dialogue.” Here the conventions of society can be cast aside and new schemas formed. From Japanese tea ceremonies to Victorian tea parties, the mad hatter and the march hare to Eichū the Japanese monk, the Shan-tea investigated the diverse history or steeped beverages for this research based experimental dwelling and hosting space.
See project blog: HERE
More information: HERE
The Shan-tea was made using elements of traditional Mongolian yurt construction, while also bearing likeness to an over-sized tea-pot. Using tea as platforms for hosting, co-exisitng and thriving in a group, during the coldest months of the year, visitors were invited into it's round interior and offered a cup of tea, in exchange for a smile and a story.
The project investigated hosting, as an artistic act, challenging the dichotomies of private/public; host/guest; stranger/friend. The border between artist/spectator and resident/guest was further dissolved by acknowledging the power of the frozen surface of Medicine Lake as a liminal space. The lake is a place between, an everyman’s land and a landscape familiar to every Minnesotan- a common ground. Guillermo Gómoez-Peña talks about such spaces when discussing his utopian New World Order,“...it’s all margins, meaning there are no ‘others,’ or better said, the only true ‘others’ are those who resist fusion, mestizaje, and cross-cultural dialogue.” Here the conventions of society can be cast aside and new schemas formed. From Japanese tea ceremonies to Victorian tea parties, the mad hatter and the march hare to Eichū the Japanese monk, the Shan-tea investigated the diverse history or steeped beverages for this research based experimental dwelling and hosting space.
See project blog: HERE
More information: HERE
